Re: ANSI serial console possible?

To: misc_(_at_)_openbsd_(_dot_)_org

Subject: Re: ANSI serial console possible?

From: Nick Holland <nick_(_at_)_holland-consulting_(_dot_)_net>

Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:30:15 -0400

Da Man wrote:
> Not an urgent matter or anything but I am temporarily in possession of
> a Supermicro 6023L-8R w/ a Serverworks GC-LE chipset. This particular
> board's bios apparently only permits ANSI on the serial port, unlike
> Supermicro's Intel E7501 based twin, the 6023P-8R, which gives you a
> range of options including VT100.
>
> So, through the serial console I can see everything up until what
> happens after the boot prompt as I understand that OpenBSD's software
> serial console is VT100. Is it possible to set the serial console to
> ANSI at the boot prompt and if so, how would I do that?
I think you are misdiagnosing your problem.
The OpenBSD console output is purely text -- the most advanced
characters in the boot process are carriage return, line feed and
backspace -- any ASCII (i.e., almost anything, unless you picked up an
old IBM 3270) terminal should display them.
If the screen output is stopping as soon as the kernel is starting to
boot, something very different is happening. Most likely, the problem
is the BIOS redirection is camping out on your serial port, the boot
loader doesn't see that com0 is "available", so the kernel doesn't use
it. (I'm assuming you have the serial console set up properly per:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq7.html#SerCon
According to one of our people who has run into this issue (I
interrogated him just for you. Ok, actually because Theo told me to add
this to the serial console info in the FAQ, and this person hadn't
responded and made the mistake of letting himself be seen by me), at
least some (he thought all, but I'm a pessimist) of the modern machines
which support BIOS console redirection also have a second option to
"Continue Console Redirection" post-boot. You want that feature off --
let OpenBSD handle the serial console output of the OS as per FAQ7's
serial console article. Failing that, just disable the BIOS console
redirection, like those of us losers without cool stuff like that do. :)
Once you have it running properly, you should have no problem using
whichever terminal emulation is most appropriate for your needs. The
"OpenBSD serial console" is just an environment variable: TERM. Set it
as you wish -- "ansi" works. :)
Nick.
--
http://www.holland-consulting.net